This invention has been filed in the Patent and Trademark Office under the Disclosure Document Program and has been assigned No. 167576.
As anyone who has ever attempted to shave while showering would attest to, it is difficult to attain a clean, consistent shave simply by going on feel. One can bring a conventional mirror into the shower, but the mirror will quickly become clouded due to the moisture in the warm air condensing on the relatively cool mirror surface. In addition, the glass substrate construction of conventional mirrors poses a potential hazard to the user should the mirrors fall and break into sharp pieces which are easily injure bare feet.
There have been a variety of attempts to devise devices that combat the condensative properties of a cool mirror surface in the excessively humid shower environment. These devices attempt to combat fog forming on a mirror through the use of; coatings on the mirror surface, direction of a flow of air across the mirror surface, electric heating elements to heat the mirror surface, electric bulbs to heat the mirror surface or the redirection of hot water from the bathroom pipes to flow through a heat exchanger and heat the mirror surface. It is self evident that all of these systems have limited practicality because of expense, non-reliability, safety hazards, difficulty of maintenance, and/or difficulty of construction and/or installation.
As mentioned above, attempted methods for combating fog formation include utilizing the flow of heated water diverted from bathroom pipes. This concept is shown in both Gottlieb, U.S. Pat. No. 4,556,298 and Stephens, U.S. Pat. No. 4,558,929. The use of both of these systems involves the altering of existing shower components and in addition to the expense involved in construction and installation of such systems, these systems become either permanent fixtures or at least relatively difficult to move or even reposition in the shower.